1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a camera which can cope with photographing of a scene such as a backlight scene having a large luminance difference.
2. Description of the Related Art
A scene of backlight is difficult to shoot. An image pickup device has a small dynamic range as compared with a silver salt film. Therefore, the photographing is more difficult with a digital camera in which the image pickup device is used. Especially, in cases where a person is a main subject, failure photographs in which a face darkens owing to the backlight are taken in many cases. Therefore, in such a backlight scene in which the person is the subject, the person is usually appropriately exposed and photographed by flash photographing, or photographing using a flash light. Moreover, this flash photographing is executed through a camera user's operation of selecting a flash mode or selecting a backlight scene as a scene mode of the camera.
Heretofore, various proposals have been made concerning the photographing of this backlight scene. For example, a technology is known in which, to earn a wide dynamic range of brightness, an output from the image pickup device is controlled into an optimum contrast for each region of a screen to process and correct an image so that both of a dark portion and a bright portion can easily be seen (Japanese Patent Publication No. 2004-530368).
On the other hand, in recent years, a face detection technology has been developed (e.g., Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 07-073298), so the judgment whether or not the subject is the person became possible. Therefore, the application of this face detection technology is also expected.